With a sullen air Tignonville threw in his mattress. La Tribe did the
same. Fortunately the passage was ill-lighted, and there were many
helpers and strange servants in the inn. The butler only thought them
ill-looking fellows who knew no better.
"Now be off!" he continued irascibly. "This is no place for your sort.
Be off!" And, as they moved, "Coming! Coming!" he cried in answer to a
distant summons; and he hurried away on the errand which their appearance
had interrupted.
Tignonville would have gone to work to recover the pallets, for the man
had left the key in the door. But as he went to do so the butler looked
back, and the two were obliged to make a pretence of following him. A
moment, however, and he was gone; and Tignonville turned anew to regain
them. A second time fortune was adverse; a door within a pace of him
opened, a woman came out. She recoiled from the strange figure; her eyes
met his. Unluckily the light from the room behind her fell on his face,
and with a shrill cry she named him.
One second and all had been lost, for the crowd of idlers at the other
end of the passage had caught her cry, and were looking that way. With
presence of mind Tignonville clapped his hand on her mouth, and, huddling
her by force into the room, followed her, with La Tribe at his heels.
It was a large room, in which seven or eight people, who had been at
prayers when the cry startled them, were rising from their knees. The
first thing they saw was Javette on the threshold, struggling in the
grasp of a wild man, ragged and begrimed; they deemed the city risen and
the massacre upon them. Carlat threw himself before his mistress, the
Countess in her turn sheltered a young girl, who stood beside her and
from whose face the last trace of colour had fled. Madame Carlat and a
waiting-woman ran shrieking to the window; another instant and the alarm
would have gone abroad.
Tignonville's voice stopped it. "Don't you know me?" he cried, "Madame!
you at least! Carlat! Are you all mad?"
The words stayed them where they stood in an astonishment scarce less
than their alarm. The Countess tried twice to speak; the third time-"Have you escaped?" she muttered.
Tignonville nodded, his eyes bright with triumph. "So far," he said.
"But they may be on our heels at any moment! Where can we hide?"
The Countess, her hand pressed to her side, looked at Javette.
"The door, girl!" she whispered. "Lock it!"
"Ay, lock it! And they can go by the back-stairs," Madame Carlat
answered, awaking suddenly to the situation. "Through my closet! Once
in the yard they may pass out through the stables."